{"id":688665,"date":"2026-07-13T04:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T04:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688665\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T04:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T04:20:13","slug":"christopher-nolan-talks-the-odyssey-backlash-genai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688665\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Nolan Talks ‘The Odyssey’ Backlash, GenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the ongoing press circuit for\u00a0The Odyssey<\/a>,\u00a0director Christopher Nolan is speaking his mind on some topics.<\/p>\n

First and foremost is the \u201ccasting controversy\u201d drummed up by racists<\/a> and transphobes making a stink online. In the film, Lupita Nyong\u2019o and Elliott Page respectively play Zeus\u2019 daughter Helen of Troy (and her sister Clytemnestra) and Greek warrior Sinon, which has sparked a predictable backlash. To those complaining about the actors\u2019 presence in the film, Nolan\u2019s content to not give these folks any true attention or even hold them in any real regard, since he knows they\u2019re just opening their mouths before seeing the full film.<\/p>\n

As he told The Telegraph<\/a>, those reactions are \u201calways irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet. This comes with the territory. Remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.\u201d Doing the Dark Knight trilogy taught him about going into adaptations with the intent of \u201chonoring the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can,\u201d a gambit that\u2019s made him one of the biggest directors in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Greek history isn\u2019t comic books, but Nolan optimistically hopes audiences can leave The Odyssey understanding where he\u2019s coming from. \u201cEven when we did something that wasn\u2019t what [Batman] fans would\u2019ve done, they enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAll I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It\u2019s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that\u2019s what adaptation is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of sincerity, he finds the success of\u00a0Obsession<\/a> and Backrooms<\/a> as a good indicator of where filmmaking\u2019s headed. Those films\u2019 focus on practical work over generative AI represent \u201c[he most] rapid whole dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime.\u201d The Gen Z demographic is \u201cutterly rejecting\u201d the technology, and he said his kids have an \u201cimmediate and harsh judgement of AI slop\u201d that\u2019s heartwarming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see it for what it is very quickly \u2013 and it\u2019s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well,\u201d Nolan continued. \u201c[GenAI] is hitting at exactly the wrong time in filmmaking. After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we\u2019re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nolan loves making movies that provide a real, tactile feeling that justify a trip to the theater. All he wants is for people to \u201csee and enjoy the magic\u201d of The Odyssey, which they can in just a few days\u2026provided they got tickets<\/a> ahead of time.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of the ongoing press circuit for\u00a0The Odyssey,\u00a0director Christopher Nolan is speaking his mind on some topics.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2826,96,59,22546,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-the-odyssey","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}